Indigenous Dispossession and the Founding of Cornell: Part 1 with Jon Parmenter – Cornell University and Indigenous Dispossession Project

The following is taken from The Humanities Pod, funded by The Society for the Humanities at Cornell originally posted to their website on December 14, 2020. Informal conversations with Society Fellows, Cornell Faculty, community collaborators, and special guests shine a light on some of the new work, the current conversations, and the latest ideas of humanists at and around Cornell.

This podcast addresses the relationship between Cornell University’s founding in 1862 under the Morrill Act and the United States’ prior dispossession of Indigenous nations’ homelands that provided the “public lands” utilized to fund land-grant colleges and universities.

Speakers

Jon Parmenter, associate professor of history at Cornell University
Paul Fleming, Taylor Family Director of the Society for the Humanities

Transcript

Read the full transcript here.

Cornell University Land Acknowledgement

Cornell University is located on the traditional homelands of the Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ’ (the Cayuga Nation). The Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ’ are members of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, an alliance of six sovereign Nations with a historic and contemporary presence on this land. The Confederacy precedes the establishment of Cornell University, New York State, and the United States of America. We acknowledge the painful history of Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ’ dispossession, and honor the ongoing connection of Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ’ people, past and present, to these lands and waters.

This land acknowledgment has been reviewed and approved by the traditional Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ’ leadership.

In addition to the Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ’ land acknowledgment but separate from it, the AIISP faculty would like to emphasize: Cornell’s founding was enabled in the course of a national genocide by the sale of almost one million acres of stolen Indian land under the Morrill Act of 1862. To date the university has neither officially acknowledged its complicity in this theft nor has it offered any form of restitution to the hundreds of Native communities impacted.